


Meet, Cute? More Like: Meet, Visceral Fear

by Galaxy_Cerebri



Series: The Bermuda Triangle [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19794691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxy_Cerebri/pseuds/Galaxy_Cerebri
Summary: It was meant to be a joke. Just a harmless little joke. It had started when Dick went to talk to his professor after class. Professor Ostick had been wondering if the word count might have been a little high but in psych profiling class, any word count is too small. So when he said he might lower it by a thousand, Dick tried to be charming and slid in a sarcastic comment toned like a joke that yes, he should lower it.But then Ostick took that as all the confirmation he needed and now the pretty red head in his class wants to kill him. Oops.





	Meet, Cute? More Like: Meet, Visceral Fear

It was meant to be a joke. Just a harmless little joke. It had started when Dick went to talk to his professor after class. Professor Ostick had been wondering if the word count might have been a little high but in psych profiling class,  _ any _ word count is too  _ small _ . So when he said he might lower it by a thousand, Dick tried to be charming and slid in a sarcastic comment toned like a joke that yes, he should lower it.

But then Ostick took that as all the confirmation he needed and had walked off to do just that. Leaving Dick to face the wrath of the other students left in the room who were glaring at him with barely suppressed rage in their eyes. He had signed his death warrant, his time was up. He always figured he'd go down in the field because of gangsters, turns out he would be done in by overworked and sleep deprived university students.

_ "Fix this," _ a feminine voice growled from the back of the class. He knew most of them by name, the class went drinking in mutual commiseration after tests, of course, so naturally he knew Harriet Black. She was the quiet one of the class, the one who everyone assumed had probably murdered someone back in her native country of England, meaning she had to flee to Gotham (because that was the done thing) but Dick doubted it. 

At that particular moment, however, with her green eyes narrowed and her face contorted by hatred, he could see her comitting murder.  _ His _ murder, specifically. Bruce really hadn't been kidding when he said hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, albeit this was a wildly different kind of context.

They didn't talk much, he'd barely recognised her voice when she hissed at him. In his defence, he was pretty sure that no one talked to her much outside of lab work. Psych Profiling was the only class they had together. He did Criminology and if the rumours were right, she was a forensic science student who had picked up the class for extra credit. Meaning she probably knew the best ways to poison him and then get away with it.

So without further ado, he nodded resolutely and bolted after Ostick in an attempt to stay alive. It was purely self preservation.

Thankfully, Ostick was gracious enough to revert the maximum word count back to its original four thousand. He’d had to word it slightly to not sound like an idiot in fear for his life and more like a worried classmate but it had gotten him empathy points that he could hopefully exploit in the future so there were some pros.

It took him a few hours to find the british girl, just after dark. He wasn’t surprised to find her in the hole that was the chemistry labs. It was like Mordor, one did simply walk into the labs. That was suicide. You’re supposed to knock and hope the gods look kindly upon you. If they do, you are granted entrance by the Basement Dwellers. Offend one, and you lose your soul.

A tad overdramatic, but there  _ was _ a rumour that half the lab users were into some weird occult group. It had started as a joke but it was Gotham, so he wouldn’t be surprised if they actually were.

Finding Harry had been easy once he was in the lab. He had asked a denizen for directions, and they had pointed her out at the back of the room surrounded by hordes of chemicals. Her fiery red curls had been pulled back into a ponytail, exposing the lightning shaped scar on her forehead while her glasses swapped out for a pair of goggles. She was tightly gripping a test tube as she slowly put drops of some chemical into her solution. He took a seat down on a nearby stool and quietly said “Hey.”

“Did you fix it?” she asked in lieu of a greeting. 

“Hi, how are you,  _ I’m doing great, thanks so much for asking _ , not a problem!” he replied sardonically. With a sigh, the girl put the test tube in its rack and the pipette into an empty beaker beside it. “Sorry,” she apologised with an awkward smile, “I’ve been told I don’t person well.”

“I’ll say,” he grinned lightly, “I’m Di-”

“Dick Grayson, I know,” she told him. “Who doesn’t know you. You gave Liam in my Microbiology class a bi crisis and you don’t even share a class.”

“That’s been known to happen,” he grinned. “It’s the charm.” She snorted at his words, leaning forward and resting her crossed arms on the table. “Sure, if that’s what you wanna call nearly having the entire class collectively murdering you like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. To each their own I guess.” she retorted, to which they shared a laugh.

“On the topic of the essay,” he began, shifting his chair closer to the table, “I got Ostick to change back the word count so you guys don’t have to do that anymore. You can burn the plans.”

“Not on your life, Grayson,” she retorted, “We’ll keep ‘em prepared in case you do this kind of thing again. I hope you know your discussions with Ostick will be monitored from now on to avoid this catastrophe from ever happening again.”

“It wasn’t a catastrophe, it was barely a disaster.”

“You’re lucky I’m not calling it the apocalypse, Grayson!”

They shared a laugh again. It was slightly confusing that this dramatic girl was so quiet in class. An anomaly, almost an enigma. “Hey so, it’s getting darker and Gotham isn’t that safe at night…”

“You don’t say,” she snarked, taking off her lab coat to stretch. “This place is like the land alternative to the Bermuda triangle.” and wasn’t that an interesting comparison. She was right, of course, that was the best way to describe Gotham and it blew his mind that no one had made the comparison before.

“I mean this in the least creepy way possible, but how are you getting home?” he inquired.

“I live just off campus, about a ten minute walk,” she said nonplussed by his question, pulling out the ponytail. Crouching down, she picked up her backpack from under the table. Throwing the hairband into it, she ruffled out her curls to be more even. She was pretty, Dick noted. How exactly did this girl drift through the school without at least one guy asking her out? Because that was the thing about Harriet Black. 

It sometimes felt like she was schrodinger’s cat. Existing when you noticed her, but if you let your eyes drift ever so slightly, her presence slipped from your mind. As if she existed in her own plane of existence. He wanted to open the box. He wanted to know Harriet Black. He wanted to  _ understand _ Harriet Black.

So, he opened his mouth and asked: “Can I walk you home?”

**Author's Note:**

> Join me on [my tumblr](https://laetusfabricor.tumblr.com/) wips, snippets, and more!
> 
> For art go to my [insta](https://www.instagram.com/laetus__art/)


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